Description

The story of the music halls that once lit up townscapes, and those that still won't die - the tales of the stars, crooks, novelty acts, demolition gangs, runaways and diehards who never gave up. Music hall was the first mass medium of an industrial age which was dominated by empires. This meant that in every city that was part of an empire, there were Empire and Imperial music halls, vaudevilles, opera houses, theatres or cinemas filled with prestige, glamour and dreams. Two world wars later, the empires, crumbled, and the Empires and Imperials in these cities were fighting dry rot and television. Many lost the fight. But some did not. Lost Empires explores the fates of these fallen Empires and Imperials around the world, as well as the stories of the survivors, such as the splendid St Petersburg Imperial Theatre of the 1870s and the restored Hackney Empire in East London. We see what links these places of entertainment, and what divides them. Some were saved because activists would not let them die, some were converted to other uses or became symbols of local or national pride. Some simply went up in smoke or collapsed when fraudsters became involved. Some remain,haunted long aftshow more